Based on Alan Warner's cult novel, this is director Lynne Ramsay's follow-up to her acclaimed debut Ratcatcher. Preserving the novel's quirky and oblique originality, Ramsay relates the tale of the eponymous Oban shopgirl (an intelligent and compelling performance from Samantha Morton) who wakes on Christmas morning to find that her boyfriend has committed suicide. Morvern casually dismembers and buries his body, telling her best friend that they have split up, and then deletes her boyfriend's name from the novel he has bequeathed her, keys in her own and sends it to a publisher. Using money from his bank account, she departs for a hedonistic holiday in Spain, where the film shifts gear. Against Ramsay's skilful evocation of Balearic rave culture, Morvern and best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott) fall out and we are forced to ask questions about what she actually wants out of this puzzling expedition. Recalling Ratcatcher in its assured directorial style (that could be described as art house plus warmth) and in the way wide-open spaces represent escape to prisoners of urban routine, Morvern Callar is not quite the equal of Ramsay's debut, but it confirms her reputation as a true cinematic artist.

After her boyfriend commits suicide, a young woman attempts to use the unpublished manuscript of a novel and a sum of money he left behind to reinvent her life.